"Woodland Scenics ST1461 Track-Bed Strips 2’ (36) HO Scale
There are 36 Strips in this Track-Bed Bulk Pack. These strips are the perfect roadbed for especially tight track applications. The strips are 5mm x 1 3/4" x 24". Track-Bed requires no pre-soaking like cork does: it remains flexible and won’t dry out or become brittle! It aligns well with cork or Homasote applications. Install Track-Bed with Foam Tack Glue (ST1444). Pin in place with Foam Nails (ST1432)."
Has anybody ever heard of pre-soaking cork roadbed before??? Has anybody ever done it? I’ve never read about it or heard of it as a recommendation… !!! [%-)]
I tried this once when I first got into the hobby in the 70’s. Other than making a mess, it did nothing for me. I don’t bother anymore since the split cork road bed curves nicely.
Yes, IIRC, in the 70’s it was supposed to be the thing to do was to soak your cork roadbed before laying it, I think to limber it up. I’ll bet if I hunted down my old 70’s RR mags, I might find that instruction again.
SO, while the info may be old, I don’t think it’s an advertising ploy…
Never had to soak any new cork I’ve laid down since I started my first layout in 1979. This seems to hold true only for “new” cork. When I moved in 2005, I pulled up many feet of cork from my staging areas that had never been ballasted with the thought why waste it, reuse it. This set in a storage building for a year until my new basement was built. When I started laying track, this stuff was hard and broke when I tried to curve it to any radius tighter than about 35". I filled a bathtub up with hot water, dumped the entire container into the tub and set bricks on it to hold it under water. Next day it was flexible as the day I bought it. I spread it out in the garage to “dry” and then reused the entire bunch. Now, some of this I may contribute to the white glue used to hold it down on the old layout which probably wicked into the cork somewhat but there were maybe 50pcs that had been removed from the box but never glued down that had the same characteristics.
Years ago, I soaked some used HO cork roadbed to remove the glue and ballast so it could be reused on a club layout; but other than that I’ve never heard of pre-soaking it.
Pre-soaking cork roadbed used to be common advice. I have not felt the need to do it myself. I can’t help wonder if it is in some ways a holdover from the days when 15" and 18" radius curves were still common on 4x8 oval-based layouts, and the cork needed some limbering up to be curved so tightly. For a while in the 1960s Atlas switched over to a rubber one-piece roadbed as a consequence.
Also, years ago many of the ballast bonding materials were not water based (a hold over from when ties were wood or fibre that swelled with water based adhesives) and there may have been a need to open up the textures of cork roadbed to give the shellacs or cements a surface with tooth to cling to.
Also, my sense is that decades ago hobby shops kept bigger inventories of cork roadbed and track and lichen than they do now, with the consequence that often the cork roadbed and lichen would already be somewhat brittle by the time you (meaning “I”) bought them. (And similarly sometimes you would find a hobby shop still trying to sell off the old fibre tie “flex” track long after Atlas had discontinued the product!). Soaking the cork might have been a way to revive its flexibility. Similarly often you’d need to soak the store bought lichen with glycerin to limber it up again.
Hobby shops tend to have more of a 'just in time" inventory thought process these days. 40 years ago a well-stocked hobby shop had a sort of secondary model railroad museum aspect to it.
The whole “dries out and gets brittle” thing also seems to vary with the quality of the cork. I have some that is maybe 20 eyars old and has always been in an area that was human liveable and it’s dry and brittle. And I have some that is pushing 40 years old that was in the uninsulated attic crawlspace at my Mom’s house, subject to 120 degree + heat in the summer even witht he powered vent, down to whatever the outside temp got to in winter, and it still bends liek brand new stuff. There is also some of each that is just the opposite - the terribly stored stuff that just crumbles and the not asold that is still fine to use. The world of cork can be very strange, it appears.
Apparently. Cork comes from a type of Oak Tree commonly refered to as the “cork oak”: from Wikipedia:
"Quercus suber, commonly called the Cork Oak, is a medium-sized, evergreenoak tree in the section Quercus sect. Cerris. It is the primary source of cork for wine bottle stoppers and other uses. It is native to southwest Europe and northwest Africa."
SO:
The characteristics of the various cork oaks, and regions in which it is grown, the treatment used to aquire the cork oak bark, and the treatment it undergoes to form sheets {or other shapes} usable for various purposes probably account for the “strangeness” of Cork.
As others have stated, Soaking cork is old advice, it makes the cork more flexible for bending to curved shapes. Modern cork doesn’t really need this.
As for Woodland Scenics, it might be nice if they let people know that their crap roadbed can’t be adheared to properly/consistantly) with normal white glue (wow, the over priced woodland scenics glue works fine Though).
It doesn’t always fail, but the bond is weak enough that it is frustrating to work with. Plus, it’s easy to deform and make for bad trackwork. I won’t use it anymore.
I use the pre-formed cork roadbed, that I nail down before ballasting. Be sure that the track is where you want it, before attaching the cork. I prefer to just nail it, since it is much easier to move it, if necessary . Bob Hahn
I use caulk, cheaper than white glue, and tacky right away. Works well with cork and the WS roadbed (I’ve used both). I doubt their premixed dilute white glue works much better than plain old Elmer’s int he logn run, not for gluing roadbed to benchwork or track to roadbed. For any sort of preformed track, sectional or flex, it’s really hard to beat caulk. I can think of no negatives when used for this purpose.
I believe that reference was from the old days when the cork roadbed was made from cork tree bark and the planks needed to be softened to curve them. Or not.